Story Summary:
The 1st Warkowitcher Wolyner Benevolent Association was a Jewish immigrant burial and mutual aid society formed in New York by former residents of Warkowicze, a small town in the historic Volhynia region-now Varkovychi, Ukraine. Like many landsmanshaftn, the society offered its members communal support, burial services, and a cultural link to their ancestral home. Warkowicze once had a thriving Jewish population before the Holocaust, when nearly all of its Jewish residents were murdered during Nazi occupation. The society's presence at cemeteries like Mount Hebron serves as a lasting tribute to those who perished and those who rebuilt their lives in America, preserving the memory of a lost community through tradition, remembrance, and solidarity. ~Blog by Deirdre Mooney Poulos
“The 1st Warkowitcher Society: Holding the Name of a Vanished Town”
At the edge of a cemetery in New York, a modest wrought-iron gate marks the resting place of those who once called a small town in Eastern Europe home. The sign above reads “1st Warkowitcher Wolyner Benevolent Association,” a name that, to the casual passerby, might mean little. But to those who understand its roots, it speaks volumes. It whispers of a vanished town, of lives upended, of new beginnings in a strange land, and the deep yearning to remember.
The town of Warkowicze, nestled in the historic region of Volhynia, now part of western Ukraine, was one of hundreds of small shtetls, tight-knit Jewish villages or market towns, scattered across Eastern Europe. Before the Second World War, Warkowicze had a thriving Jewish community. Families kept kosher homes, prayed in small synagogues, traded in the markets, studied Torah, debated politics, and shared the rhythms of village life.
Like so many Jewish towns in the Pale of Settlement, Warkowicze had its share of hardship. But life there was filled with meaning, tradition, and community. By the early 20th century, rising antisemitism, economic instability, and conscription into the Russian army drove many to seek new opportunities abroad. Those who left for America brought more than bundles of clothing. They carried with them the names of their towns, their customs, and a fierce loyalty to one another.
In cities like New York, these immigrants organized landsmanshaftn, mutual aid societies based on shared origins. The 1st Warkowitcher Society was one such group. For its members, it was far more than a burial society. It was a surrogate family. It helped with finding jobs, paying for burials, offering small loans, and most importantly, keeping alive the memory of the world they had left behind.
Then came the Holocaust. The Jewish community of Warkowicze, like so many others in Volhynia, was decimated. Beginning in 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators swept through the region. Jews were rounded up, shot en masse in forests and ravines, or deported to extermination camps. By the war’s end, Warkowicze's Jews were gone, murdered, displaced, erased from the maps of living memory.
But memory clings where stone stands still. In cemeteries like Mount Hebron or Mount Zion, where societies like the 1st Warkowitcher laid claim to narrow strips of earth, the names survived. Etched into headstones and memorial gates, they told the story of a people twice displaced, first by choice, then by violence.
Today, the 1st Warkowitcher Society’s burial plot remains a testament to a community that refused to forget. In its silence, it speaks of resilience. It honors those who built new lives in America while mourning those who never had the chance. It is both a beginning and an ending, a fragment of a world lost and preserved.
Through ongoing efforts like those of The Legacy Foundation at Mount Hebron, stories like that of Warkowicze and its people are being rediscovered and shared. And in doing so, we answer the call of memory that so many landsmanshaftn sought to fulfill: to remember, to honor, and to never let the names fade.
~Blog by Deirdre Mooney Poulos
Work Cited:
Yad Vashem – Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, Ukraine, and Beyond
https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/institute/pinkas.asp
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) – Encyclopedia: Volhynia Region
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/volhynia
JewishGen Communities Database – Warkowicze (now Varkovychi, Ukraine)
https://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/community.php?usbgn=-1056458
Sefer Volhyn: Encyclopedia of the Jewish Communities of Volhynia (Yizkor Book)
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/volhynia/volhynia.html